The most bewitching

Irène Jacob as Valentine

Maria Schell as Grushenka

Ingrid Bergman as Ivy

Gregory Peck as Atticus

Greta Garbo as Grusinskaya

Amala Paul as Shalini

Tuesday, April 22, 2014

Printed Rainbow

Films, or works of art, come hardly more beautiful than this. Gitanjali Rao's 2006 film Printed Rainbow is ostensibly about an old woman and her cat, her solitude and her dreams, her ability to imagine coloured landscapes and her gumption to live on. But made with loving, careful detail, the film says a lot more. It is not merely about old age, it is about modern society. People trapped in little boxes, far from rain, far from forests, birds and harems' enjoyment. Everyone is on a wheelchair, unable to get out from it: and imagination, bright, vivid imagination rich with music, textures and disperse scenes from the far-flung corners of India, through the matchboxes of Sivakasi, is required, is the only vehicle to escape the monotony, the imprisonment behind a spinning wheel: the spinning, ever-circling wheel of a sewing machne, of a paper boat in too little a sea, of life and death.

As of the time of writing, this 15-minute-long masterpiece can be watched in its entirety here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NaNJbaBsZ-I

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What they mean:

Films to die for: They were made, and they reaffirm, quite simply speaking, my belief in the power a human is possessed of. One could say life is worth it for them.

The best ... films/Finest performances: These are simply films/performances I think worth mentions, not necessarily my favorites or my likes (just as I do not consider some of my favorites to be good films per se). To take an example, I personally liked Titanic but I consider it to be an ordinary film; I did not like The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance but I consider it to be a fine film. Of course, that selection in itself would only reflect my viewing preferences and beyond that, once again what I consider as fine or not, thus once again me; even the finest horror ever presented would be difficult to find in those lists.